Barrios

COLLECTIVE STATEMENT
The works featured in BARRIOS invoke, reclaim, and explode the notion of the “barrio” in order to reflect on community as experience and metaphor in Latino and Latin America. The exhibit focuses on a diverse social geography that has been shaped by empire, colonialism, race, and social inequality, and on the ways that language, religion and politics invite us to imagine and question lo común. The idea of ‘comunidad’ is an integral part of the Hispanic/Latino diaspora in the Americas. But community is often built in the tension between home and diaspora, between stable bonds and social precariousness, and representations of Latino communities are often composed through problematic frames. The exhibit, then, is conceived to reflect Latino subjects in the work of Latino photographers and interrogates how Latino and Latin American subjects are  perceived, both within and without extended forms of community. The repertoire of images offers a two-tier visual tableau that encompasses work created in the U.S. and internationally, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Haiti. BARRIOS also includes the vintage black and white work the collective’s members created in the South Bronx during the 1970s through 1990s, offering a unique look at the early formative work of these six accomplished visual artists. BARRIOS represents the largest selection of the collective’s work shown together to date.